A striking thrill ride through a future both frightening and tantalizing.
When a man can’t trust his own body and mind, where does he turn? Turner explores that central question in this debut sci-fi novel.
When some men stumble into the perfect life, they’re grateful. Others are proud. But Aiden Markusson can’t help but feel suspicious of his own amazing fortune. With a beautiful home, an enormously successful tech startup, and an incredible level of physique and intellect (matched only by that of his fiancee, Ever), Aiden believes it’s all too good to be true, guided by some unseen hand. Soon enough, his paranoia begins to bear fruit, as his body starts acting strangely, and he finds he’s being followed, not by a business rival but by NuGen, a company on the cutting edge of biomechanical research. Aiden digs deeper into the mystery and discovers that the closer he looks, the more mistrustful he becomes. Even when his most promising lead seems to be nothing more than a garden-variety conspiracy theorist—not to mention a registered sex offender—Aiden can’t put aside his trepidation, and his flawless life descends into a mess of shifting loyalties, fear, and violence. Even some of his pursuers don’t seem to know the whole story. Aiden starts wondering whom he can trust while questioning his own identity: “You really don’t know what’s going on, do you?” But if he’s going to save himself, not to mention his new wife, he’ll need to find out, and fast. While the broad strokes of the initial mystery become clear very quickly, the enthralling thriller delivers surprising layers and keeps readers guessing throughout. Is this player the man behind the curtain or just another piece of the puzzle? Is this character a sidekick or a villain poised to double-cross the hero? These sorts of questions add to the tension created by Aiden’s terror and uncertainty, while insightful descriptions of near-future technologies, from cybernetics to transportation and home computers, give the novel a sense of depth and realism that’s easy to neglect in this sort of sci-fi work. Readers should be left begging for a sequel.
A striking thrill ride through a future both frightening and tantalizing.Pub Date: May 4, 2016
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 322
Publisher: Synchrony Publishing
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
PROFILES
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
